Ben Stein’s movie defending science crackpottery has been delayed in release.
In the meantime, real science is under assault. Maybe Stein could stand up for paying attention to real science sometime?
O Ceallaigh’s Felloffatruck Publications laments:
I read in today’s news of the school superintendent in Montana who cancelled a scientist’s speech because of pressure from antagonistic members of the community.
Professor Steven Running is quoted as saying that he’s “never before been canceled in any venue by any organization.”
How does it feel to be an evolutionary biologist, Steve? Of course, global warming is fast joining evolution as a science topic that has to confront a large “faction of society that is willfully ignorant” about it. Like the current President of the United States and several of the current candidates for the position.
If Science no longer has the ear of society, if it cannot put forth the results of its findings, good or bad, favorable to me or not, without being shouted down by those who have both reason and the resources to suppress those findings, then we have lost far more than the future benefits of scientific and technological contributions to society. Contributions that, over the last two hundred years, have permitted the human species to achieve a standard of living far beyond the wildest imaginings of pre-Industrial Revolution humanity.
We have lost the essence of Liberty.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Ben Stein has the tasteles gall to imagine a link between Darwin and Hitler in the first suggested title for his crackpot movie. What a whore for creationism! (no further comment necessary)
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Real science, like the life journey of religious people, is a process. The process can be interrupted at any time. Senselessly. Like by a Mack truck. Or by the withdrawal of approval and support by a populace that would rather watch American Idol, or talk about congressional hearings on which baseball players used steroids in 1997.
My colleagues are taking 20% hits in this year’s funding for their projects simply because the leaders We the People elected have not passed the operating budget for fiscal year 2008 – which was supposed to have been passed last October 1st. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem))
Glad you enjoyed the post, Ed. Greatly appreciate the shoutout.
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Being able to stand up for itself isn’t an excuse for creationists making unjustified, unwarranted, stupid assaults on science.
If they were real religious people, they wouldn’t be unjust, or stupid.
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Crackpottery is more fun to make a movie about.
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/
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“In the meantime, real science is under assault.” Should be able to stand up for itself, by itself, if it’s real science. Hmph.
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